From the New York Times: The Biden administration proposed a significant expansion of federal spending Friday, asking Congress to bolster funding by 16% for domestic programs including education, health research and fighting climate change as it tries to harness the government’s power to reverse what officials called a decade of underinvestment in the nation’s most pressing issues.
The nearly 60-page request, totaling $1.52 trillion for domestic discretionary programs, comes on top of President Joe Biden’s plan to seek trillions of dollars in new infrastructure spending. It does not include tax proposals, economic projections or so-called mandatory programs like Social Security, which will all be included in a formal budget request the White House will release this spring.
The request is a declaration of Biden’s belief that expanding, not shrinking, the federal government is key to economic growth and prosperity by directing government dollars toward some of the country’s biggest problems, including poverty and a warming climate.
Among its major new spending initiatives, the plan would dedicate an additional $20 billion to help schools that serve low-income children, create a multibillion-dollar program for researching diseases like cancer and sharply increase government spending to fight and adapt to the damages of climate change.
It would also seek to lift the economies of Central American countries, where rampant poverty, corruption and devastating hurricanes have fueled migration toward the southwestern border and a variety of initiatives to address homelessness and housing affordability, including on tribal lands. And it asks for an increase
of about 2% in spending on national defense.
All told, the proposal calls for a $118 billion increase in discretionary spending in the 2022 fiscal year, when compared with the base spending allocations this year. It seeks to capitalize on the expiration of a decade of caps on spending growth, which lawmakers agreed to in 2010 but frequently broke in subsequent years.
Administration officials would not specify on Friday whether that increase would result in higher budget deficits in their coming budget proposal, but promised its full budget would “address the overlapping challenges we face in a fiscally and economically responsible way.”
As part of that effort, the request seeks $1 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to enforce tax laws, including “increased oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns.” That is clearly aimed at raising tax receipts and cracking down on tax avoidance by the wealthy.
Officials said the proposals did not reflect the spending called for in Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which he introduced last week.